Fred's Tavern

We bought several Christmas related cartoons this year to entertain the kids, among them both Santa Claus is Coming to Town and The Year Without a Santa Claus. I never noticed this when I was a kid, but it is pretty obvious that the Burgher Meister who bans toys in his little German village in Coming to Town is the same actor as the Heat Miser in the Year Without. No Barney Rubble, that guy, but a great Thespian nonetheless. I wish he was cast in a role less hostile to the season so he could have shown his full range as an actor.

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The new year is upon us, and with New Year's eve just behind us, I thought now would be a good time to recount some of the great bars I've had the chance in prior years to frequent. First and foremost among that list would be Fred's Tavern in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, home drinking turf at one time to the Superstar himself. Fred's was the non-meat market meat market, if that makes sense. You were never really out at a bar down the Jersey shore without looking for some companionship, but Fred's was designed in principle to make that fact far less obvious. And for the Hatcher, never very successful in such endeavors, there was a value to striking out in a bar that looked like it was meant only for self-indulgent drinking. A simple square bar in a simple square room; no DJ, no bands, no waitresses, and locals as bartenders. In short, it was a dive.

Across the street physically, and a million miles away metaphorically, was Touche; and it is a credit to the tolerance for diversity of the drinking men I knew that many nights were spent split between Touche and Fred's. But you couldn't claim you were in Touche for any reason other than what was the obvious reason for all who went there, so your defeats were somehow harder to swallow. If you had asked a banker 20 years ago on a Saturday night which bar would continue in posterity, he would have seen a line outside of Touche on a Saturday night with a young and obviously affluent clientele just busting to spend money, and across the street he'd see a mixed crowd trickling in slowly, among them the Superstar in his peculiar outfit and locals with leathered skin who like like they just crawled out of a Jimmy Buffet song. He would have said Touche, and he would have been dead wrong. Today the entire block that Touche and the adjoining motel once occupied is a barren bayfront field, and Fred's lives!

Oddly enough, though I spent many more nights drinking in Fred's with guarding buddies, most of my memories of the place involve high school friends. The giant, Dusty Eggs, and their college friend Bad Richie rented a place in Sea Isle the summer after they graduated from college, but frequented Fred's from their palatial island estate (it was perhaps the lowliest summer rental I've ever seen, and that is saying something) one island north. Toward the end of summer, as these guys were on the eve of leaving the beach for their first real job, I wandered over to Fred's and found them coming out of the package store with a case for the road, heading back to Philly determined to show up hung over for their first day of work.

A year or two later, after the legend of the Superstar had spread, and my high school friends had heard the stories and seen the imitations from me, the giant and Dusty Eggs were in Fred's with me, determined to experience the Superstar. He was a late arrival that night, so much so that these guys were beginning to think I was the Superstar. Finally he came into Fred's, but now he had to live up to the billing. If you know the stress of highly recommending a movie to a friend and then watching for his reaction , I have to tell you this was ten times worse. The giant was especially aggressive, and all too obvious, in trying to draw out the Super. He knew the stories, and he thought all you needed to do as a total stranger was lead the Super to telling each one with a comment obviously designed to solicit them. Example: to get the Super to say "It's a psychological thing with the Superstar - I don't eat shark, and they don't eat me," the giant would walk up to the Super and say, apropos of nothing - "I had mahi mahi for dinner tonight." This approach only scared the Super, and he never took the bait.

I was getting quite desparate, seeing the Superstar experience go up in flames, so much so that I couldn't think of a way to salvage the evening. The giant was also getting frustrated in his efforts, when Senior Senior guard Mike Cantwell, who did not know the giant but could see what he was trying to accomplish, recommended to the giant that he buy the Super a drink. And sure enough this is all it took - before you knew it the Super was flashing the giant his prison ID card, and there was joy in Fred's.

A third trip stands out in my mind, when Dusty Eggs and I made the trip to Fred's from his home closer to Philly. At one point while at Fred's, he flat out disappeared. I went looking for him the next day to no avail. He finally turned up that afternoon - in Fred's of all places. Turns out he had stumbled out of Fred's and down to the beach, where he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly. His parents came to bail him out in the middle of the night, and in a testament to the blind love a mother has for her son, her mom immediately suggested that someone must have slipped a micky in one of his drinks. Dusty Eggs grabbed onto that explanation, probably too eagerly for his dad to be convinced, and I am sure to this day his mom believes that the only rational explanation. Since that time, I think there have been at least three other micky incidents he's been tied to. When he reunited with Fred's the next day, he put $10 in the jukebox and programmed in the same Paul Abdul song for 40 straight plays. The bartender unplugged the machine after about the 3rd playing.

So if you are ever in Stone Harbor, have a drink at Fred's and breathe the same air the Superstar used to swallow down with his cheap booze, and see if you can fire up a Paula Abdul song on the box, but keep a careful eye on your drink at all times.